Charlie Condou, Kamari Romeo and Kim Tatum Star in the UK Premiere of Straight White Men by Korean American playwright, Young Jean Lee.
Straight White Men is a hilarious and revealing play about the most unoppressed of this world’s peoples.
They are feared, envied, occasionally attacked and derided. But pitied? When personal identity is essential and privilege is a problem, what is a straight white man to do?
Young Jean Lee – called ‘hands down, the most adventurous playwright of her generation’ by the New York Times – is a playwright whose work revels in subverting stereotypes. Straight White Men takes place over the Christmas holidays, when three brothers assemble at the family home, to celebrate the season with their widowed father. The youngest, Drew, is an award-winning fiction writer. The middle boy, Jake is a hotshot banker, but the oldest, Matt, played by Charlie Condou, is burdened by student debt and an unexplained failure to thrive.
Games are played. Chinese food is ordered. Brotherly pranks and trashtalk distract them from the issue that threatens to ruin the testosterone-fuelled, boys-will-be-boys celebration. In this raucous, surprising and fearless work, Lee takes an outside look at the traditional father/son narrative, shedding new light on that theatrical storyline we have come to know all too well.
But, and here is the twist, the people in charge of proceedings are neither white, nor straight, nor male…
Charlie Condou says: “I’m really pleased to be working on the fantastic ‘Straight White Men’. I feel like masculinity is in a bit of a crisis at the moment and this play explores the effects of white male privilege in a beautifully delicate way”.
Straight White Men is at Southwark Playhouse Wednesday 10th November-Saturday 4th December. Listings and ticket information can be found here.
